The live-action film uses trained dogs enhanced with special effects, with the occasional human on screen. Will Forte plays Doug, Reggie’s owner, a loser stoner who kept the dog out of spite when his girlfriend left him. Doug keeps trying to lose Reggie, dropping him off far away, but Reggie believes it’s a game they’re playing, which he wins by coming back. Ferrell is perfect for the role, bringing the same sweet, guileless enthusiasm he showed in Elf, and he’s so shrewd an actor that he’s actually touching when Reggie says, “I really just want to be home.”
When Doug finally drops Reggie in a mean alley, he meets the scrappy Bug, who insists that being a stray is the only way to live. You’re free of pesky humans, and can have sex with anything you want, including a random couch left on the street. Foxx sounds a lot as though he’s channelling Samuel L Jackson here, which isn’t a bad thing. Between the crude language and the streetwise delivery, it’s almost as if Quentin Tarantino had made a dog movie. In fact, the director is Josh Greenbaum, who did Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar and who keeps the action moving swiftly.
When Bug finally convinces Reggie that Doug does not love him, Reggie decides to make his way back and bite off the one thing Doug loves the most, his penis. It’s funnier when Ferrell says it. And technically, that means Strays qualifies as a revenge movie.
